


A Good Man

by companionenvy



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-10 15:53:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/companionenvy/pseuds/companionenvy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After A Good Man Goes to War, the Doctor finds the newly regenerated, nine-year old Melody Pond in 1969 New York. What she tells him leads him on a desperate mission to avert a tragedy and reunite a family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this immediately after A Good Man Goes to War. It is now thoroughly AU. 
> 
> To refresh your memories: At the end of the episode, the Doctor has taken off in the TARDIS to search for the kidnapped Melody Pond, who, he has just learned, grows up to be River Song. Amy and Rory are left at Demon's Run with the adult River.

Finding Melody had been easy. He was gambling, of course, on the probability that what the Silence had done to her — and he had a very good idea, now, of what that was - would have induced a regeneration, but the Doctor was _brilliant_ at gambling. Well, brilliant-ish. Usually. Better than average, definitely, never mind what Pete Rose said, the cheat. But in any case, he had been right. The TARDIS picked up two artron spikes in 1969, and the Doctor set a course for two minutes after the second.

She was in a regenerative coma when he landed in the alley. It must have been a slow death; it would take her body time to recover. He tried not to think about how long it might take her mind, but then, time was something she had. The thought wasn’t entirely comforting. This was not the life Melody Pond should have had. “ _Melody Williams is a geography teacher,_ ” he heard. “ _Melody Pond is a superhero._ ” But Amy was young, so very young, too young to know how many heroes lived to envy the geography teachers of the world. He suspected that Melody would learn that, in time. He hoped Amy never would.

He had not left the med-room while she slept. He had thought, at first, of moving the equipment to Amy’s and Rory’s room, but thought better of it; he didn’t know, yet, what she already knew and what he might have to conceal, and would have to tread carefully. The TARDIS had, with no prompting from him, given the room a less sterile appearance — the Doctor didn’t know how much Melody remembered of her time in 1969, but waking up in a white room full of alien tech might well have been traumatic for her, under the circumstances. Although, of course, it wasn’t exactly _alien_ tech for her, was it? He wondered if she knew yet, what she was, if Amy and Rory would have told her. If she had even met Amy and Rory — she certainly hadn’t shown any sign of recognizing her mother in the warehouse.

This train of thought was interrupted by a beeping from the machine - Melody was waking up, and he wasn’t ready. He had amused himself, before today, with thinking of what he would say to River the first time she met him, how he would get his revenge for her smugness when he, and not she, had the advantage. This child, however, was not River. She would be, and they would be amazing together, and they would _run,_ but not yet. Right now, she was a lost little girl who needed help finding her way home.

No, she wasn’t River yet, and Time Lords were normally quite good at handling situations like this without saying something to make the whole thing even more awkward and bizarre and he knew Rory would be angry if he found out, which he would, and Rory had a _sword_ , but when Melody Pond opened her eyes approximately 30.38473 seconds later, there was only one thing the Doctor could think of to say to her.

“Hello, sweetie.”

\--

The first thing that Melody Pond thought when she was aware enough to think anything was that she was back with them. Because there were times that they had spoken to her kindly, and told her how wonderful and special she was, how they could help her. Those had been lies, and Melody had known every time.

But this was different. This voice didn’t lie, when it greeted her with a tenderness she had not heard since before she had been taken. So when she looked at the man properly, and recognized him as the man who had been with her mum the day her mum didn’t know who she was, she thought, for a moment —and then stopped.

Because the second (or third, or tenth, or fiftieth) thing that Melody Pond thought was that, when she did see Mum again, she _still_ wouldn’t recognize her, and that was the first time, in one year, three months, and (she concentrated for a moment) two days,six hours, ten minutes and forty five seconds that Melody began to cry.

\--

The Doctor had never been much good with crying people, especially not such small crying people. He supposed, however, that doing something soothing would be a good start. What did human children find soothing? That would probably be best, if only he could remember. He had already moved his hand to start tickling her left elbow when he remembered that that was only for New New Humans, and then only for a few months during the revolution of Delta Beta. Very particular about their elbows, the New, New Humans. Humans were an entirely different matter. He didn’t see how, precisely, it would help, but he would have to try.

“Shh, it will be okay. Shh, Melody.”

To his surprise, Melody stopped crying almost at once.

“You know my name,” she said. “No one here says my name.”

“Oh, I know so much more than your name, Melody Pond," he said. It was true; truer than he could tell her now, or maybe ever, because she was a Time Lord, too, however impossibly and mistakenly. A Time Lord who would never have a Gallifrey to run from, who would accept his penance without knowing what she had to forgive. 

He shook himself out of his reverie. This girl might have been a Time Lord, but the Doctor was still the last of his kind. Melody, whatever she was, was something new.

"I know that you were born on a satellite called Demon’s Run. I was there to put you in your first cot — remember that? I know you do. I saw your room at the orphanage. That mobile, with the stars and planets, it was just like the one hanging from it. I didn’t remember at first, because I wasn’t looking for it. But you, Melody Pond, you’re clever. Clever, and brave. Kidnapped, surrounded by the Silence, and you still remember enough, can still _hope_ enough, to make your own stars. And then you did it. You escaped from them — a nine year old girl against an army she can’t even remember, most of the time, and you won. The girl in the suit was a duplicate?”

“Are you going to take me home?” Melody demanded, and there was something so very Amy-like about her inflection, when she said it, that his doubts about who had raised this child began to abate.

“Very soon. But first, I need to understand. They were trying to make the flesh independent?”

“Yes,” said Melody. “They were going to make loads of them, an army. But it kept going wrong. That’s how I regenerated the first time. Then they made another, but she was still connected to me, and she wasn’t strong enough. That’s why they needed the suit. The suit is how I figured out that it wasn’t my body and I was still dreaming. So then - ”

“So then you took back control. Made the flesh break out of the suit, which killed the other body, waking you up. Brilliant.”

“It hurt.”

“What did?”

“When the flesh died — I felt it.” She looked up at him quickly, and then looked away, as if she was afraid he would judge her. The Doctor sighed. She was too young for this type of guilt, and it wasn’t warranted. Not yet. He crouched down so that he was at her eye level.

"It wasn’t really alive. You need to remember that. It was always being directed by your consciousness — that’s why you remember everything that happened while you were in the spacesuit.”

Which, the Doctor realized, wasn’t necessarily a good thing. “Your mum — you know she didn’t know who you were when she shot at you, right?”

“I know,” said Melody. “She told me before I left that it was going to happen. Like she told me that I could ask for help, but I couldn’t ever say my name, not to anyone. And that I couldn’t trust anyone but the first person to call me “Melody.”

“Clever of her.”

“She said the Doctor told her to say that.”

“Clever of me, then. Well, that makes sense.” The Doctor smirked, but stopped himself quickly. “Oh, right. Yes. I’m the Doctor. Suppose you’ve heard all about me.”

“Only a little. Mum said to tell you 'spoilers.'”

“And right she was. I guess I told her to say that, too?”

“No,” said Melody, and for a moment a mischievous look in her eye gave a fleeting hint of the woman she would become. “She said you were very smart, but also very stupid and so I should remind you."

That, the Doctor thought, was totally unfair. But he had plenty of time to teach Melody better.

“Well then, Melody Pond,” said the Doctor. “Let’s give you a tour.”

\--

“…So there I am, awaiting execution in the Sacred Cherry Grove, and George runs right out and says ‘I cannot tell a lie. ‘Twas I chopped down that cherry tree.’ Which was completely a lie, of course, but it worked because the Flamarians don’t execute children. They threw him in prison, and I popped right over with the TARDIS and took him back to Virginia. He had another revolution to get ready for, after all.”

The Doctor and Melody had been wandering through the ship for hours. He had shown her the swimming pool, the amphitheater, the cinema, the library, the other library, the cricket pitch, and, finally, the zero room, which, he told her, was just the ticket for recovering from regeneration sickness. She didn’t say much, seemingly content to let him natter on, but the Doctor had noticed, at times, an increasing seriousness in her expression. So he wasn’t surprised, really, when she stopped him before he could launch into his next anecdote and asked if she could ask him a question.

The question itself was another matter entirely.

“Doctor,” she said, looking straight at him, “are you my father?”

A terrible, terrible idea entered the Doctor’s head. _No_ , he thought desperately. _No, no no_.

“No,” he said. “Not at all. Your father is a much, much better man than I am. The best. Rory Pond. The Lone Centurion. The Boy Who Waited. Rory Pond, from Leadworth. You know that. You know _him._ ” The last words were almost a plea.

“No,” said Melody. “I don’t. Mum doesn’t like speaking about him. So I thought maybe — because he died, you see. He was a soldier, and he died fighting. At the Battle of Demon’s Run.”


	2. Chapter 2

If anyone had told Amy yesterday that after facing Daleks and Silurians and Autons, after traveling around time and space in a blue box, after remembering her husband, her parents, her best friend and _the universe as she knew it_ back into existence, the most surreal experience of her life would involve sitting in her bedroom in Leadworth while Rory showed a visitor their wedding album, she would have thought that person was crazier than the Doctor.

All the same, it was true. As strange and bizarre as her life had been up to that point, before now, the strangeness had been mostly external: monsters and mad places and impossible things. And somehow, strange as it all was, Amy had always known how to react. When it came down to it, whether you were dealing with a nagging mum or a killer pepper-pot, the world around you had to be accepted and dealt with. But Amy hadn’t retreated into her bedroom because she didn’t know what to say or do, although both were true, but because she didn’t even know how to _feel_.

When Amy had woken up in labor with a baby she hadn’t known was coming, even amidst all the other fears, there had been room for at least one that had little to do with her captors and their plans. What kind of a mother could she be, now? She and Rory had spoken of having children, eventually, but she had seen it, even after the wedding, as something far in the future, a remote event that couldn’t possibly seem real while she was still on the TARDIS, with all of time and space before her. If she had known that she was pregnant, had had nine months to wonder and plan and love, Amy knew that she could have done it, even if it was sooner than she had wanted. But they had stolen this from her, they had stolen from her those nine months that every mother had, had stolen the labor she was supposed to have, with Rory by her side and pain that came, not from terror and grief, but from the physical agonies their drugs kept her from feeling. She hated them even for that last theft, which anyone but Amy might have considered an act of mercy. Whatever it was, having a child, she wanted to feel it, all of it, and she didn’t know if, after missing all that, she would ever be able to feel enough for the child whose very birth now seemed like a violation.

But then, they had put her daughter in her arms, and it was suddenly right. What she felt couldn’t have been called happiness, not while she was in captivity with Rory so far away and their baby liable to be taken away forever at any moment. Yet in its strength and love, it was almost better than happiness. She had no word for it, but she had, she thought, felt it before.

When Rory had been dead, and Amy had been grieving without even knowing why, the Doctor had taken her to Darillium, a city, he said, that was made of song.

“ _How can a city be made of song_?” she had asked.

“ _I don’t know_ ,” said the Doctor. “ _No one has ever been able to stay there long enough to figure it out_.”

She hadn’t liked the sound of that, and told him so, and she had liked it even less when he told her that he wouldn’t be leaving the TARDIS.

" _It's the telepathy_ ," he explained. " _Useful when you need it, but it can be - noisy. Like using an amplifone when you already have perfect hearing.... and you don't have amplifones, yet, do you? No, of course not; how do you ever manage? Not that you need an amplifone, but to not even have the option_..."

" _Doctor_ ," she said warningly. He was rambling, and he wasn't looking at her, and that meant he was hiding something. 

He stopped fiddling with the console, and faced her. " _Alright_ ," he said, suddenly serious. " _Darillium is fantastic. One of the wonders of the universe, and I want you to see it. But I can't. Maybe I could have once, but not now_." He looked down. " _I couldn't bear it_."

“ _Bear what?_ ” Amy said. “ _It’s just music_.” But because she trusted the Doctor, because she really, really trusted him and knew, whether he would ever admit it or not, that he loved her too well to ask her to do anything that would harm her, she left the ship and stepped out, alone, into the city.

She would never, in all her life, be able to describe it. It wasn’t just because no language could ever be good enough, but because human minds didn’t work like that. She was not seeing, she was not even hearing, in any way that she had heard before, she was _inside_ a world of song. And she knew, though she couldn’t have said how, that had anyone else been beside her, they wouldn’t have heard or seen or felt whatever it was she was experiencing, but something entirely different; this was a song that had been written just for her. The song was sad, somehow, more exactly the meaning of _sad_ than anything she had known before. But it was, though it didn’t make sense to her, then or now, a good kind of sadness, a kind that told her that all the sadness in the world was worth it if it could make her feel this deeply for just one moment of all the moments in her life.

She felt something of that song on her wedding day, and it was that feeling, she believed, that had let her bring back a whole world with the power of it. She felt it again when she held her daughter for the first time: a good sadness, a painful joy. She didn’t have the right word for it, but she would do her best, and she would make that word her daughter’s name.

Melody she loved and would always love, even if she never saw her again. But the woman downstairs was not Melody, not now, and Amy had no idea how to feel about her, how to reconcile the grown woman she had known and liked and admired with the baby she had failed to protect. It wasn’t only that River was older than Amy herself was (and how much older, she wondered , because River had told her what the TARDIS had done to her), or that she had already met her without knowing who she was. And she did like River very much; she should be glad, she knew, to think that her daughter would turn into someone so brilliant and brave. It was just that she had always associated River with the Doctor’s world, not hers. Amy loved that world; loved the Doctor, who was a little bit scary and a little bit mad and completely wonderful, loved the life he could show her, had sometimes thought she never wanted it to end. But even if the Doctor had taken her to hear it, it was Rory who had put that song in her heart. When she had imagined a child, their child, it had always been later, after the traveling was done, when they would have to keep being as amazing as they now knew they could be without him. Of course, she had hoped that in time, her children, too, would hear the sound of a blue box in the garden, that they would go off with him, maybe even with her and Rory too. She wasn’t selfish enough to deny them that. Yet in all her vague dreams, she and Rory and the someday-children had shared that awe, that wonder at this scary and mad and amazing man, an awe that didn’t end when they knew him well enough to feel also pity and love. River loved him in an entirely different way; she loved him as an equal, and was, in her own way, no less terrifying and brilliant than he was. Maybe not even less sad. And Amy could not, _could not_ even begin to think of that woman as her daughter.

\--

Amy didn’t know how long she had stayed in her room. But Melody would, she thought. She would know to the second, just like the Doctor always did. It was not even close to the first unsettling thought she had had since she learned what part of the truth River had been able to reveal. But this time, she brushed the thought aside. She couldn’t do this, not to herself, not to Rory, and not to — _her_. She might not know how to feel about the woman downstairs, might not ever know how to feel about her, but she knew she had to act.

Rory and River were talking when she came down, but stopped when they saw her.

“Amy” — Rory began, as River said “Mum.” Amy flinched.

“You don’t have to call me that,” she said.

“Do you want me to?” said River. Her voice was gentle, like a mother's to a child.

Amy couldn’t answer that. Instead, she said, “I’m sorry I shot you.”

“You didn’t know who I was.”

“I should have.”

“Amy, there was no way we could have known,” said Rory. But Rory was not a mother.

“I forgave you before it ever happened,” said River. Amy processed this. If she had known in advance, then that meant - 

“Then Melody - the Doctor finds her?”

“I can’t tell you that. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Rory cut in. “You don't have to explain.”

Irrationally, the words angered her. Why couldn't he see how _wrong_ it all was? “Did River enjoy the wedding pictures? Because she was there, you know. Timey-wimey.” 

She was viciously satisfied to see Rory’s startled expression, although it was gone in an instant. “No, I didn’t know.” He turned to River, smiling. “But I’m glad.”

“So I am,” said River. “Something to look forward to.” There was something sad about her eyes, Amy thought. She wondered, suddenly, if River would have been able to bear Darillium’s song, and hoped she could. And maybe Amy couldn’t love her yet, but she found that she could pity her. It wasn’t enough, not remotely enough, but it would have to serve.

“Melody,” she said. “Can you - would you like to stay here, with us, for a while?”

River smiled, but it was still a little sad. Sad and joyful, all at once. 

“I have to be gone before the Doctor gets back,” she said. “But thank you.”

She turned to go, but Rory stopped her. “I guess it would be a bit silly, me playing the father - although, now that I mention it, i do have some concerns about your boyfriend." He looked a little troubled by the thought, but pressed on. "But the thing is, I don't know what will happen, after this, and I don't know if I'll get the chance to say it to you when you're young enough to make it count, so I just want to say that I love you. I loved you the second I held you in my arms, and I will never love you a bit less than I did at that moment. Remember that, no matter what."

She threw her arms around him, but didn’t speak. When they broke apart, Rory left the room, taking time for another glance before he was gone.

Amy didn’t know what she was going to say. How could Rory be so good at this? Why couldn’t she?

As it turned out, she didn’t have to say anything at all.

“Amy,” said River Song, “you’re going to be a wonderful mother.”

Before the implications of that statement could register, before Amy could think to thank the woman in front of her for that parting gift, she had kissed Amy quickly on the forehead, and vanished into time.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder: The Gamma Forest is the home-world of Lorna Bucket, the young woman who dies at the Battle of Demons Run. Lorna had met the Doctor briefly as a child, and notes that"thirty seconds of the Doctor is the only thing that ever happened" in her dull home planet.

The Doctor had delayed as long as he could. Melody wasn’t strong enough, he had told himself. She needed more time to recover. Surely he could give her a day or two. But Melody wanted to go home, and the robust quality of her protests when he suggested yet another session in the zero room forced him to admit what he had really known all along: he was procrastinating, not for Melody’s sake, but for his own. He wasn’t ready to face the Amy Pond he feared he might find there, if what Melody had said was true.

Of course _Melody_ thought it was true, but it couldn’t be. For one thing, the Battle of Demon’s Run was over, and Rory was still alive and well. Maybe the timeline had been rewritten and Melody hadn’t caught up yet — it was harder to rewrite a Time Lord’s memories than a human’s. Or maybe Amy and Rory had become separated, somehow, and Amy was right now waiting for the Doctor to find him. Or perhaps Rory had left his wife and child as part of a long game against their enemies, and Amy had lied to Melody so that the Silence couldn’t tear the knowledge from her. That would be a painful sacrifice for Rory and Amy, to stay apart for so many years, but then, they would do anything for Melody. There were a thousand reasons why Melody might think Rory was dead without his actually being so.

He had waited long enough, however, and there was just one more thing he had to do before he brought Melody home and learned whatever terrible or saving truth he might find there.

“Melody, when you were a baby, and Madame Kovarian took you from Demon’s Run, where did you go?”

“I don’t know the name,” said Melody. “But Mum gave me a message for you, for when you asked. She said you’d understand.”

“What was it?”

“That the only water in the forest is the river.”

Half an hour later, the Doctor was back in the TARDIS with Amy and Rory, setting coordinates for their next destination.

\--

“So, the Gamma Forests. Never been. Why would I have? I mean, nothing happens in the Gamma Forest. And I mean _nothing_. Everyone knows that. The place is legendary for it. Sometimes a traveler will go — by accident, usually - but when he comes back he can never remember anything worth mentioning about it. Even the people who live there, when they make it off-planet — and it doesn’t happen often — don’t have a thing to say about the place. Strange, isn’t it?”

“Doctor,” said Amy. “Sorry to interrupt the history lesson, but what does this have to do with Melody?”

“Everything. You see, that’s just it. What kind of a culture doesn’t have a history? Especially an advanced civilization like the Gamma Forest. A lot of technology coming out of the Forest, but nothing else — no art, or literature, no records. They must have a history. But somehow, it has been entirely forgotten, is being forgotten, even as they live it.”

“You mean —“

“Oh, yes. The Gamma Forest is the birthplace of the Silence.”

“So the Silence took Melody?” said Rory. “Then who was Madame Kovarian?”

“Their slave,” answered the Doctor. “Although I doubt she knows it. She must have been taken when she was very young — maybe Melody’s age. Remember, the Silence survive thanks to post-hypnotic suggestion they use to control anyone who might oppose them. For us, it only lasted for so long. But take a child and leave her with the Silence day and night, for her whole life, and they’ll have total control. Whoever Madame Kovarian might have been, once, is long dead.”

“And they want to do that to Melody?” said Amy. She knew that it wasn’t going to work, that it had already failed, but the thought of it still made her sick.

“Exactly. The Silence want access to spatio-temporal technology. The Forest-Dwellers have some of the best of the age, although not the best. That honor goes to — anyone want to guess?”

“The clerics,” tried Amy.

“Give the girl a medal!” said the Doctor, as he flipped a switch on the console. “They tried to manipulate the Forest-Dwellers, but their time travel tech is in early days, yet. It wasn’t good enough for what the Silence wanted, which was total domination throughout space and time. So they raised Madame Kovarian as a puppet, then sent her to round up the clerics. Only even that wasn’t enough, so they found the perfect replacement. A newborn Time Lord, young enough to mold into the most powerful weapon the universe has ever seen all while giving them access to technology beyond their dreams.”

“So it’s great that we know where she is,” said Rory, “but how are we going to find her if we can’t even remember to watch out for the people holding her?”

“I have a plan,” said the Doctor. “And the beauty of it is that it is so phenomenally dangerous that the Silence will never, ever see it coming, because they won’t believe anyone would be stupid enough to try it.”

The Doctor beamed. Amy and Rory glared, and his grin wavered.

“On second thought, perhaps I should have rephrased that.”

\--

Amy’s part of the plan was the easiest, and the most terrifying. The Silence, the Doctor had learned from Melody, tracked people using DNA technology that relied on markers in their m-DNA. These markers were passed down from mother to daughter; when the Silence’s sensors registered Amy’s presence, they would read it as Melody’s. It wouldn’t, of course, fool the Silents closest to Melody, who would know that she was still present and suspect the trick, but it should draw off enough of them to leave the path clearer while they went to investigate. As part of the difficulty was going to be keeping clear-headed enough to remember what needed to be done, this was no small advantage.

“But if I’m drawing the Silence away from you, I’m drawing them toward myself,” objected Amy. “How will I remember?”

“Frankly, you won’t need to,” said the Doctor. “The Silence will take you, and probably start running tests to figure out who you are and whether or not you can be used. My guess is that they’ll think you’re an older version of Melody, which should keep them interested for a while. After everything is done, we’ll come and find you.”

In the meantime, Rory, would be fighting off the human guards.

“Why would the Silence even need human guards?” asked Rory.

“As a distraction,” the Doctor answered. “Rory, what would you do if you had a gun in your hands — which you will — and a Silent in front of you?”

“Um…I saw the moon landing video. So, kill it on sight?”

“And what about if you hadn’t seen the video? Assuming you could remember for long enough to get a shot off.”

“They took my daughter. Do you even need to ask?”

“Exactly. The thing about post-hypnotic suggestion is that it only goes so far unless, like Madame Kovarian or the Forest-Dwellers, you’ve been exposed to it with such intensity for so long. It can’t make you do something you would never have done under ordinary circumstances. On the other hand, when a suggestion corresponds so strongly to what you want to do of your own free will, it is incredibly powerful, and almost impossible to counter-act with any other suggestion. These Silents may not know about the moon landing footage, but they’ll have noticed by now that some of their enemies can’t be prevented from attacking them on sight for any reason. The human guards are there to stop it from ever getting to that point.”

“And what will you be doing when all this is going on?” said Amy.

“Well first, I’ll be picking up Melody.”

“At first?” asked Rory. “Isn’t that the whole point of what we’re doing?”

“Not that Melody. _River_ Melody.”

“Why can’t we just do that now?”

“Too risky,” said the Doctor. “I’m not sure when in her timeline I’ll be picking her up. Too much chance of paradox if she meets the two of you.” It sounded sensible enough, but Amy couldn’t help but notice that the Doctor hadn’t met Rory’s eyes while he said it, choosing instead to adjust his bowtie. “Anyway,” the Doctor continued, “The Silence aren’t the only ones with DNA sensing technology, only mine is better. Melody regenerates in 1969, so River’s DNA won’t match the baby’s, and they won’t register her coming. But her _type_ of DNA is unique — not quite human, not quite Time Lord. I’ll be able to use it to get straight to where they’re hiding her. If all has gone well, with Amy drawing off the Silence and Rory managing the humans, we shouldn’t meet with too much resistance. River will deal with the remaining Silence - she'll like that - I'll collect the Ponds, starting with Melody, and we'll be off."

The Doctor wasn’t sure if Amy was reacting to the reminder of how happy her infant daughter would one day be to slaughter her enemies, or to the notion that she and Melody would lose their genetic bond before the girl’s tenth birthday, but in either case, she looked gutted.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but we don’t have time for this right now. You need to leave first; the Silence will pick up the signal as soon as you leave the TARDIS, and we don't want them to know that there's anyone else here with you, if we can help it."

And, to her credit — but not his surprise — she kissed Rory and left without a protest.


	4. Chapter 4

_I have to save my daughter_ , thought Amy. _I have to save my daughter. I must keep going, because I need to save her_. The Doctor had told her to keep one thought in her mind, one thought strong enough to keep her moving no matter what else the Silence took from her. One thought that no instruction on their part could ever countermand.

There were other thoughts, too, at first. Thoughts about where Rory was, right now, if he was safe. Thoughts about what harm the Silence might have done Melody, in what subtle and irrevocable ways they might already have shaped her. Thoughts about if she would ever see the Doctor again, after this was all over, if she would ever see Leadworth again. They couldn’t keep traveling with Melody, but they couldn’t go home, either, not with a not-quite human baby whose face would change before her adult teeth had had a chance to come in. Who would, despite everything she and Rory could do, have been kidnapped at least once already by the time that day came, for whom poor, dull Leadworth, as the first place anyone would think to look for them, would be the most dangerous place in the world.

She thought about how once again, she would be waking up in a strange place, lost in an amnesiac fog, her body not her own. She took strength in the thought that, this time, it was done willingly, that they could not take her body from her, not this time, because she was giving it freely for her daughter’s sake. Giving her body, as every mother did, as she herself had done for nine months she would never remember. Had she suffered every pang of childbirth, she could never have done more than she was doing now, walking through a forest to offer herself as a monster’s bait.  
.  
 _Save her from what_? she thought. _Save her from who_? For some reason, she could no longer remember, but the answers didn’t matter. _I have to save my daughter_ , thought Amy, and kept moving, unaware that the steps she took were no longer entirely her own.

\--

While Rory had certainly done his fair share of fighting while guarding the Pandorica, as it turned out, it was his experience with stealth that was most useful here; the Lone Centurion had learned how to disappear when he needed to. Of course, he hadn’t been able to disappear quite so literally without the Doctor’s vortex manipulator, which, he suspected, was the same one that belonged to Melody.

He was pleasantly surprised, however, to find that it was equally helpful being Rory Williams. Before he could get to the guards, he had to find out where they were. Rory rather hoped that if someone at home had come up to him and asked where, if Rory pleased, he might find the nearest nuclear arsenal, he would have the sense not to tell him (if he had known), and perhaps to alert local authorities. But Rory had a way about him that people trusted, a hapless, good-natured, eminently non-threatening air that had cost him a many hours of insecurity when he still thought he was in competition with the Doctor.

Now, if Rory saw himself in competition with anyone, it was with the Lone Centurion. Rory could never be the Doctor. But he _had_ been the Lone Centurion, even if he couldn’t remember it most of the time, and then usually in vague and half-conscious bursts of recollection. If he wanted, the Doctor told him, he could open Rory’s mind so he could remember it all. But to Rory, it felt like a cheat. It was much better, even if it was also harder, to have to be the Lone Centurion with only Rory Williams’ memories to rely on than with nearly two thousand years of experience, two thousand years that must have changed him in ways more profound than the ability to snap into warrior mode by the grace of muscle memory. It had been hard-won, but he was finally happy to be just Rory, and he wasn’t going to risk losing that for any tactical advantage.

It took some careful questions and some reading between the lines, but eventually, Rory found the place he was looking for. The Forest-Dwellers, it seemed, had only the most confused awareness of what was taking place on their own planet. But even with the Silence a constant presence in their lives, they knew that people were taken, sometimes, usually strong men conscripted into service in the North. Rory knew better than to press for details as to who had taken them and for what service; he thought he knew the answers already, and if he didn’t, he wouldn’t get any help here.

He had just had his first glimpse of a high tower in the distance when he met the first of the human guards, and retreated deeper into the woods. His gun was good, almost magic even by the standards of these people, far more advanced than his own, but even so the only way for one man to take an army was by surprise. He aimed, and the first volley of shots met their marks. _They’ll be fine_ , Rory reminded himself as a whole row of soldiers fell. _They aren’t dead_.

Only the Doctor would have an automatic, laser, sub-machine _stun gun._

_“It does have a lethal setting_ ,” the Doctor had told Rory, sounding as serious as Rory had ever heard him, before he left the TARDIS “ _I hope it won’t come to that, but if it does, you need to use it, and it is very important that you remember that_.”

Rory had responded just as seriously. “ _I’ve killed men before_.” It hadn’t been often, but he had, and he remembered it, if only barely. The Doctor had given a slight nod, and then shaken his hand, told him to be careful, and wished him luck, which somehow, coming from the Doctor, was odder than an exuberant embrace and an ill-timed joke would have been.

He would keep the Doctor’s words in mind. Rory could be the Lone Centurion, when he needed to be. But, he thought, as got gradually nearer to the citadel, stunning guard after guard as he teleported in and out of their ranks, he would try to be Rory Williams for as long as he was able.

\--

The Doctor could tell right away that this River was young, maybe even as young as she looked, which was around Amy’s age. She hadn’t regenerated since he had left her with Amy, but it was clear now, as it hadn’t been before, that she would do so at least once more before becoming the River Song he knew. The way she greeted him — and the number of diary entries she seemed to be leafing through - made it obvious that this abrupt summons was by no means a new experience for her, although he didn’t think that they were lovers, yet; it might just be a quirk of this particular regeneration, but her interaction with him lacked the easy physicality of her older self. He found he rather missed it.

“We’re going to land right outside the citadel,” he said. “Between them, my companions should have already diverted most of the guards, but there’s no need to call attention to ourselves.”

“But you _love_ calling attention to yourself,” said River, and the Doctor couldn’t help but smile.

“And you’re not exactly known for subtlety either, but I think just this once we can be discreet.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said River. “Sometimes when I’m with you, I think I might like a little exhibitionism.”

So, definitely not lovers, yet. Good to know.

“Maybe when you’re older. Anyway, we’ll land there, and then follow the signal to — well, you.”

“Got it. Then I do all the work while you play nurse.”

“Right. There’s just one more thing.” And there shouldn’t be, he knew, because he was playing a very dangerous game, but he had to try. “You might see a man. Young. Brown hair. Big nose. He’ll be wearing a vortex manipulator. Have you seen one before?”

“Don’t insult me,” River said, still playful.

“I’m not. Anyway, he’s my companion, so if you see him, don’t shoot.”

“Your companion? Which one? Have I met him yet?”

“No one you know,” said the Doctor, and set the coordinates.

\--

This, River thought, was just so _typical_ of the Doctor, not that she could blame him. Almost as soon as they stepped out of the TARDIS, they had heard a scream, and then sobs. Very high-pitched sobs.

“Wait here just a tick,” said the Doctor. “I need to check on this.”

“Of course you do,” said River, half exasperated and half admiring. “The world could be ending, and you’d still run to a crying child.”

“And it’s a good thing for your sake that I do, Melody Pond.”

“Be back soon,” she said, and blew him an exaggerated kiss. And then followed him, of course, just in case.

Just around a nearby cluster of bushes, a little girl was standing, doing what would have looked to most people like an elaborate pantomime, but which River recognized as a frantic, fruitless attempt to fight against a force-field barrier. The Doctor was already scanning it with his screwdriver.

“It’s alright, I’ll get you out” he was saying, as the girl said, brokenly “They’ll never let me go. No one’s allowed to come here. Only the people they take.”

“But you came anyway. Why is that?” he said.

“It was my dad,” she said. “They took my dad.”

“And you must be very, very brave to have come looking for him. Which is good, because I’m going to need you to be brave, Lorna Bucket — that is your name, isn’t it? - and then, I’m going to need you to _run_ , because I have a feeling things around here are going to get very dangerous for any clever little girls still around after I’ve done what I came here to do.”

River relaxed. This was easy; even humans could learn to avoid falling into force-fields if they knew what to look for, and the girl’s father, if he was a guard, would be easy enough for her to find, as he would still be knocked out, if the Doctor’s friend had done his job right. Seeing her should be enough to break whatever hypnosis was keeping him here; Lorna would be halfway home by the time they got around to rounding up more children to use as puppets, and as soon as he freed her the Doctor wouldn’t have to spend any more time -

But wait. Why had she thought that? _Who_ was rounding up children? It had made sense to her a moment ago, but now the words were nonsense. Maybe the Doctor had been being mysterious again; he often didn’t tell her more than she needed to know, since their timelines were so precariously intertwined. Why all she knew today was...was...oh, of course. The child. She had to save the child. What was she waiting for?

River started moving. The Doctor had the scanner, but it didn’t matter, she knew where to go. The Doctor shouldn’t have been so worried; she remembered thinking so, at the time, although she couldn’t imagine why she had been so sure, then, that it was all going to work out. It isn’t as if she could have known that it would be this easy. No one came to stop her, even when she walked up to the door, even when she climbed the stairs and made a left and right and right and left, even when she walked into the nursery and picked up the baby who had been left, quite alone, in her cot —

And, very suddenly, she looked down in horror, mind abruptly, devastatingly clear and realized exactly why this had been so easy. Because the child lying so contently in her arms was Melody Pond, which meant that River Song had walked right into a trap.

A moment later she heard a screech, and saw the first of the huge, winged monsters hovering right outside the window.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angst ahead. I'm so, so sorry.

Amy awoke with — but no, she hadn’t been sleeping, not really, and if she knew that, and was thinking clearly again, and the Doctor wasn’t here, then something was wrong. She needed to get out, now.

As she pulled the sensor pads off her forehead, she heard footsteps, a whole parade of them, running above her; it seemed that she was in some sort of cellar.

“This is Bishop Thomas, ninth brigade second division,” came a voice through a megaphone. "We have received word of a class A temporal disturbance on this planet. Anyone present will come out with their hands up and report for questioning.”

Amy came out, but she kept her hands where they could still be of some use if she needed them. The soldiers raised their guns.

“I’ll answer whatever questions you like, later on, but first, you’re going to take me to find my family.”

“Now why would we do that?”

Amy hadn’t thought that far ahead, but as she looked outside, an answer presented itself to her.

“Because if I’m not seeing things, a dinosaur just flew past this window, which means you guys are way out of your league,” she said. “And I know someone who can help.”

\--

He had done it. The human guards were, as far as Rory could tell, entirely out of commission, and he was almost at the citadel door. Somewhere inside was his daughter. He just hoped the Doctor had done his part, because Rory wasn’t waiting.

As he approached, a wild shriek rent the air, and, from nowhere, three reptilian beasts appeared in the sky.

“Rory,” someone called, and he turned to find the Doctor, completely out of breath, behind him. “Get inside, get Melody, and get to the TARDIS. I can hold them.”

“What’s happening?” said Rory. “What about Amy?”

“There’s no time to explain, and Amy will be fine but you need to get inside right now.” He raised his screwdriver. The beasts screeched again, in pain this time, and moved a little farther off. “ _Go_ ,” the Doctor shouted, and Rory went.

As soon as Rory had entered the building, he heard another kind of cry. “Melody!” he shouted, and followed the sound upstairs.

When he got to the right room, he found Melody, crying, in the arms of a woman he had never seen before. He pulled out his gun, which was no longer set to stun.

“Put her down _right now_ ,” he said.

“Don’t shoot!” said the woman. “We’re on the same side. Here, take her, before this gets any worse.”

He allowed himself to be distracted, for just a second, by the thrill of once again holding his daughter in his arms before another kind of instinct kicked in and he returned to the potential threat in front of him.

“What do you mean ‘we’re on the same side?’”

The woman came forward, arms raised placatingly, but Rory didn’t miss the gun holstered on her thigh.

“River Song,” she said. “The Doctor told me I might run into you.” She held out her hand.

Rory didn’t take it. Couldn’t, for the moment, even muster up the strength. Because there was a very good reason why he wouldn’t have recognized Melody, but only a very bad one why she wouldn’t recognize him.

But, looking down at his daughter, looking up at his daughter, he knew he couldn’t afford even a second to grieve.

“Come on,” he said. “Hold onto my wrist. The Doctor wants us in the TARDIS.”

She placed her hand on his arm, and they disappeared.

\--

He had heard of her before; that much was obvious. Heard of her, but hadn’t met her: if he had met her in another body, he probably wouldn’t have trusted her without an explanation, and if he hadn’t heard of her, his face wouldn't have looked the way it did when she said her name.

Maybe, in his timeline, she was dead. But there were more important matters at hand.

“What did the Doctor say, when you saw him?” demanded River

“He said that he would hold them off, and to get to the TARDIS,” the man answered.

“We need to help him. He’ll never be able to do it on his own.”

“What are those things?”

“Reapers,” said River. “They come when there’s been a really bad paradox. They stitch wounds in time, or at least, that's the idea. Really, they cauterize them, and anyone else that gets in their way. They’ll destroy the whole planet. Or they would, if the Doctor didn’t stop them. But it will kill him.’” The man was still looking down at the baby, rocking her quiet. For a moment, River wasn't sure that he had heard her, but then he looked up at her, and began to speak, quickly and with an intensity that River hadn't been expecting.

“Listen, you aren’t going to understand everything I'm saying, but you need to trust me. I think I might be able to stop this, but you’ll have to explain exactly what happened and exactly what you think the Doctor’s going to do to stop it.”

As much as she wanted to run off to the Doctor’s aid, something in the man's face made River hesitate. She had experience in situations like this, and this man clearly had vital information that she didn’t.

“This whole thing — it was a trap by the Silence. A worst case scenario for if the Doctor found them. They were counting on the fact that Melody, the baby — she’s me as a child.” She waited for a question, but it didn’t come; either the man had been traveling with the Doctor for too long to find this revelation odd, or he had already known.

She went on. “They knew if the Doctor found the Gamma Forest base, he would use me to find the baby. So they distracted him by trapping a little girl in a force field and then fed me the one suggestion I couldn't resist: find the child. Since it was what I wanted anyway, the order was too strong to fight, so strong that I didn't remember that the child was me - it's never a good idea to touch a past or future self, but especially not in a place where time’s been meddled with. And it has been meddled with, more than even the Doctor knew, because the Silence were further along in their experiments than he thought if they could transport the entire race through an emergency temporal shift.”

“So they’re all gone?”

“Yes, for all the good it will do us. Their method isn’t remotely safe, and a lot of them are going to die. But the survivors make it to Earth; I’ve met them there. They’re betting - and they're right - that the Doctor will have an emergency program set to send us back there once he sacrifices himself against the Reapers. Then the only man who can stop them will be dead, and the baby will be on Earth, completely vulnerable to being taken again as soon as the TARDIS lands.”

“But how will the Doctor’s sacrifice stop the Reapers?” said the man urgently. “And how do the Silence know that the Doctor is going to be the one to do it? I mean, _I_ know that he’d die to save a planet — or one person, if it came to it— but how do they?”

“Because he’s the only one who can. The Reapers don't want to destroy the world, they just don't understand how to cope with a paradox of this magnitude in any other way. But they're also amazingly adaptable. The Doctor is a Time Lord. He's lived so long and seen so much that his _existence_ is a paradox. If he opens his mind to them, the Reapers will have to alter their standards of reality to cope with him; they'll redefine their perception of what level of paradox the world can tolerate, and use what they've learned to find a a less destructive way of repairing time. The only way to save the planet is to combine the experiences of the Doctor with the brute strength of the Reapers - only they have to kill him to absorb the energy. It's the only way, and there is nothing I can do to stop it."

The man looked, not at River, but at the baby, apparently deep in thought. 

“I think I know how to save the Doctor,” he said. “And I need you to know, in advance, that I forgive you.”

She waited.

“I’m going to offer myself to the Reapers,” he said. “But I’m going to need your help.”

\--  
Melody was, as he expected, not going to accept this without a lot more convincing.

“How would that work?” she said. “You’re human. Not even I would be enough to fix this, and I’m part Time Lord. Just traveling in time isn’t enough.”

Rory thought carefully before he spoke next. He didn’t know how much Melody knew about him — not a lot, if she didn’t even know what he looked like — but he needed to be as vague as possible if he didn’t want her to put together whatever pieces of the puzzle she had. At the same time, he had to convince her.

“I’m not just a time traveler,” he said. “I’m a lot older than I look, and my timeline is way more complicated than even you can imagine.”

“Even if that were true, I can’t just let you sacrifice yourself for him,” Melody said, and Rory knew how much that must have cost her. He was a stranger to her, and the Doctor was — whatever he was, and it would only have been natural for her to jump at any chance to save him. “Even if I would, he’d never allow it.”

“I’m not going to give him the choice,” said Rory. He remembered the Doctor’s warning about the gun, the intensity of his parting words, his feeble excuse for not picking up Melody until after Amy and Rory had left the TARDIS. The Doctor had known Rory was supposed to die and had been hoping he could save him, Rory realized, hoping without really believing it. If the worst happened, he had wanted exactly what Rory wanted right now — to at least spare his daughter the knowledge that the man she would be killing was her own father. “And I think — I’m sure that the Doctor knows it has to be this way. I can’t explain it, but I _know_ that this is the way it happens, because in the future, it already has. I just didn’t see it until now.”

He could see her indecision; she had no argument, didn’t have enough of the information to argue, but didn’t want to admit it. "River," he continued. "I know you think you're being selfish, trying to save him because you...care for him, but it isn't just you. The world needs the Doctor. And how long do you think any of us is going to last if the TARDIS takes us back into a Silence trap without him?"

It was enough, it had to be enough, to convince her. After a long pause, she spoke. “Why do you need my help?”

“I told you I was older than I looked, and in a way I am. But it’s complicated. That all happened in a different timeline that got changed. The memories are there, but I can’t access them consciously. The Doctor once told me that he could use his telepathy to make me remember, if I wanted. So I need you to bring them to the forefront of my mind, in order for the Reapers to absorb them. They’ll come to me when they sense it?”

“As long as you’re outside of the TARDIS,” she said quietly, and Rory knew that he had won.

“I’m ready. I just need to put the baby someplace safe.” 

“I know where her — our- room is,” said Melody. “I’ll take her there; the paradox doesn’t matter inside the TARDIS.”

There was no way to refuse without risking it all, no way, even, that he could say good-bye without giving himself away completely. Yet as they -she — walked away, he realized that he had already said, back in Leadworth, all the good-bye she had needed — would need — to hear. He only wished that he had the chance to do the same for Amy, but she knew, and she was strong. Would be strong, for their child.

Melody came back. “Are you sure about this?” she said. “I won’t think any less of you if you back out now, and neither will he.”

“I’m sure.”

They walked out of the TARDIS. Melody lifted her hands to his face. And in less than a second, Rory realized that part of his plan, at least, had failed.

She tore her hands away. “No!” she said, “I can’t,” and fell sobbing on his neck.

\--

Her father. The man in front of her was her father. And she had been about to kill him.

“I won’t let you,” she said, still crying, “We’ll find another way.”

“Melody. Melody. If I could spare you anything, it would be this, but I can’t. I wanted so much to think that I could take you home, that I could show you some bit of all the love I had for you. I’ve met you, you know, when you’re older, and I wanted to think I had a part in making you into that woman. But when you didn’t recognize me, I knew.”

She was still clinging to him, unable to pull away. “Is there anything - _anything_ — that I can do?”

Her father thought for a moment. “There is one thing. I think that, after you do this, you’re going to be arrested. I don’t want you to fight it.”

This was surprising enough to bring her out of the pure intensity of her grief. “Why not?”

“Because when I know you, later, you’re in jail,” he said. “You escape all the time, and those are going to be the best times of your life. Even so, I wish it didn’t have to happen. But if it does, I don’t like to think of any worse reason for you to be in prison than what you’re going to do to me right now. And if the only gift I can give you is that your worst crime comes from having the strength to do something this hard to save the world, then maybe it will be enough.”

“I promise,” said River.

In the skies, the shrieking grew louder. The Reapers were flying low now, and circling one particular spot as if preparing to strike.

“It’s time,” her father said. “I love you.”

“I love you, Dad,” she said, kissed him, and once again raised her hands.

The rush of telepathy was always powerful, always overwhelming, but this was indescribable. She felt like she was living his whole life through their bond, seeing her mother as he saw her, seeing _herself_ as he saw her, both as the baby she had been and the woman she would be. She saw him as the Lone Centurion of legend, and thrilled to find him so patient and brave, but she loved him best as he was at home, silly and shy and a little bit awkward, yet still so noble and good, and she could have died of grief for what she had lost in losing him. But if she had to lose him, what a mercy to have been given this moment, now, where she could come to know him, to love him so completely. In return, she tried to give him as much as she could of herself, to show him her childhood, her mother as she knew her, sadder, she knew now, than the one he had known, but still beautiful and strong and, in spite of everything, capable of wild and uncontained joy. She showed him her first travels with the Doctor, so he could live it all again, with her, and she showed him, though it should have been impossible, how she knew, somehow, that the version of her that he had known, the older Melody that he had been so proud of, when he learned the truth, would be who she was because she had seen herself first through his eyes, today. And, because the connection was so strong, she knew past any doubt that he understood.

Just then, his forehead grew cold in an instant, and she recoiled, left with only her own thoughts, her father lying dead beside her.


	6. Chapter 6

River was thankful, at least, that the clerics had taken her away before her mother arrived. After everything else, she couldn’t have borne that as well. They had brought her to a small, windowless room in the citadel, cuffed her, and left here there while they sorted the mess below, posting two guards outside the door.

She distracted herself by thinking of what she would say to the interrogators. By this era, it was acceptable for temporally displaced prisoners to refuse to answer questions on the grounds of potential timeline disruption, and they would be unlikely to press the point after what they had seen today. If, once found guilty of physically committing the crime in question, such prisoners pleaded innocent by reason of compulsion, hypnosis, coercion, or any other extenuating circumstances, the normal procedure was to let them go under strict parole, with the condition that if they were subsequently found to have been lying, they would be executed at once. But River had already confessed, and she wouldn’t be making any pleas. She was where she needed to be.

By the time the door opened, nearly two hours later, River was prepared for their questions. But it was not a cleric who walked into the room.

Neither of them spoke at first. River took in her mother’s appearance; she knew that she was several years younger than River herself was, but at the moment, she didn’t look it. Yet neither did she look, yet, like the mother River remembered — the grief was too new; it hadn’t yet matured into something stronger yet more relenting.

Finally, River said “Mum I’m — I’m so sorry,” more because someone needed to say something than because she thought the words could mean anything now.

Her mother crossed the room, and put her arms around her, holding her as her father had done such a short time before. With her hands bound, River couldn’t return the embrace.

“Don’t you ever apologize,” she said. “Don’t you ever feel you have to. Not for this.”

She broke the hug so she could look at River. “When did you figure it out?”

“As soon as I entered his mind. I stopped, at first, but then he told me to do it anyway. It was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s the kind of man your father was,” she said. “I should have spent every day of your life telling you that.”

“No,” said River. “When I was a little girl, I thought you didn’t talk about my father because of some secret. Then, until today, I thought it was because it made you too sad. But I was more right the first time, although not in the way I thought. You didn’t do it for yourself; you did it to protect me, so that I wouldn’t have to live knowing I would — knowing what I would do until there was no way of hiding it. You, Dad, even the Doctor — you all knew, and you kept it secret, for my sake.”

As she spoke, the words registered as they had not before. Mum knew. She knew now, which meant that, as far as River's timeline was concerned, she had always known. She had raised her, loved her, protected her, all while knowing what River would grow up to cost her. She had never felt less worthy, or more loved. 

"I should never have done it," said River. "Even to save the Doctor. Just because we all remembered it that way — time can be rewritten.”

“Not all times,” said Mum, sounding stronger. “Melody, believe me, I _know_ that time can be rewritten. But when I think of all that might have happened or might not have happened if you had been a different person the first times I met you — you were older, then, and I didn’t know who you were — I also know that we shouldn’t, not unless the universe will end if we don’t. I don’t want to live not knowing if my memories, _my life_ will still be real tomorrow. This is our time, and we can only do what we can.” Her mother paused. "I should stop," she said. "Spoilers."

It was an old joke between them, or a new one, she supposed. It had never been funny, apart from the variety of increasingly irrelevant and nonsensical ways the two would find to invoke it, and it certainly wasn't funny now, but River laughed.

It was time. "You have to go," said River. "The clerics will be here soon, and they can't know that you're my mother." 

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“You won’t be.”

“But you need me now.”

“I do. But it can’t be this you, and this me. Like you said, we live with the time we have. Even time travelers.”

Her mother nodded, but didn’t leave. “Before I go, there was something I wanted to ask you.”

River waited; Mum seemed to be deliberating on how to say it, whatever it was.

“The clerics — the Doctor and I spent some time with them, explaining things. Not everything, of course, but enough. Finding out about the Silence made them rethink some things, especially the ones who were at Demon’s Run. It seems the church has been corrupt for a long time, and some people are ready for a change.”

She paused; River thought she knew what was coming.

“The Silence are gone,” she said, “and a lot of the Forest-Dwellers are leaving too. Too many bad memories, now that they can remember. So some of the clerics were thinking that maybe, they could start a new base here, and try to make things better. They’ve asked me to stay; I know it’s only because they feel sorry for me, sorry, and guilty, but I think that maybe, I could help. So I was wondering - if you thought — if you thought that it was a good idea. I'll understand if you can't tell me," she added, but River could, at least, give her this.

“Yes,” she said. “I think that would be a wonderful idea.”

And, having finally stopped fighting time, both of them knew that it would be.

\--

Epilogue

When she hears that old, familiar sound, late at night on the day her daughter finally comes home to her, she thinks at first that she is imagining it. When Melody had walked through the door — and she had known, right away, that it _was_ Melody, no matter how different she looked — she hadn’t even thought, in her joy, to look for the Doctor, even though she had always assumed, over the years, that this day would bring more than one reunion. She doesn’t think about it, in fact, until Melody herself brings it up; he had been _right behind her_ , she insists, a moment before she had arrived at the front door.

“The Doctor will come if we need him to,” she had replied. “Today, I don’t need anyone but you.”

But though it had been true, though she may not have needed him, it doesn’t change her thrill when she realizes that yes, for the first time in years, the Doctor has come for her, later than she expected, as usual, but, somehow, still right on time.

She leaves Melody sleeping in her room, and walks outside. And there he is, her Doctor, and now Melody’s, looking up at her home from a little distance away, but giving no sign of coming nearer. He hasn’t seen her yet.

“Doctor!” she cries, running to him. He opens his arms for her, his face breaking into the smile she remembers.

When he releases her, the smile is gone, but it is mock-seriousness, not real gravity that she reads there.

He gives an exaggerated bow. “Your Holiness,” he says.

Apparently, he’s done his research. “Shut up,” she says, punching his arm. “If I’d wanted to be called that, I picked the wrong side of the revolution. I’m just Head Assistant to the Papal Mainframe.”

“Well, yes, but the Papal Mainframe is a _computer program_. She doesn’t actually exist. Hence for all intents and purposes, the “head assistant” would really be the head of the church. I’m impressed. Frankly, I didn’t even know that you believed in — churchy things,” he finishes vaguely.

“I don’t,” she answers. “Fifty-first century. Church has moved on. Not nearly so hung up on details like that.”

“Details, right. Speaking of which, since when do you know anything about computer programming? In the fifty-first century, no less.”

“Nice to know you can still get right to the _really important_ stuff.”

Suddenly, the Doctor looks serious, and there is nothing mocking about it. “I wasn’t sure you’d want me to,” he says. “I didn’t even know if you’d want to see me. I was going to come before, but Melody was so happy to be going home, and I didn’t want to spoil it. I couldn’t take that from you too, after everything else.”

“I could never not want to see you, Doctor,” she says. “But to answer the question you asked, I have a lot of help. Especially from one young priest - a Father Octavian.

He recognizes the name, as she knew he would, and says “Good for him. And you.”

“I didn’t even want the job, to be honest. I don’t know why they chose me; all I really did for the rebellion was to tell my story. Edited, of course. But I like it. As it turns out there are advantages to having unlimited access to the most powerful computer in the galaxy.”

“What kind of advantages?” he asks, but there is no suspicion in his tone, as there once might have been. He really does trust her.

“Nothing bad. Just making a few changes to the historical records. And don’t lecture me; I had good reasons.”

“I don’t need to lecture you; you’ll get your comeuppance soon enough. Mother changes history; daughter becomes an archeologist — sounds like classic teenage rebellion to me.”

“Actually, I'm fairly sure she was rebelling against you. But seriously, Doctor, most of it wasn’t anything more than what I had to do so that Melody would be safe, and not just physically.”

“Like the fact that if her father died at Demon’s Run, she couldn’t kill him in the Gamma Forest. So she wouldn’t know until the very end."

“Right. And the rest of it -.” She stops. It has been so long since she talked about this to someone who knew the truth, who had known _him_ , and not just the version of him she has created. “I did that for Rory,” she manages. “Melody can’t know who he really was, which means I can’t put it in any official accounts or anything like that. But even after the timeline had been changed, there were legends of the Lone Centurion, and legends have to start somewhere. I know it isn’t really how he’d want to be remembered, but it’s better than nothing.”

“You remember him,” says the Doctor. “I mean Rory, not the Centurion, although that was a part of him, too. You do, and Melody will. I think he would say that was quite a bit better than nothing.”

“Thank you,” she says simply, and moves on. She’s learned the value of doing that, these past nine years. “There’s something else I use the Mainframe for. The Papal Mainframe handles security for most of this sector of the galaxy, you know.”

“That wouldn’t happen to include Stormcage, by any chance, would it?”

“Yes, and it’s amazing how we never can manage to fix all the security glitches in that one cell.” Her tone changes. "River won't leave, you know," she says. "Rory told her that she was in prison when he met her. She won't leave for good until she's sure he isn't coming back."

“That's two mysteries solved, then," says the Doctor. "Why she's there and how she's getting out. I think she'll be very disappointed when she finds out that I know she's cheating." He stands as if to leave, but then stops. "Though all of this is good to know, you haven’t answered the really important question yet.”

“And what’s that?”

“Are you happy?”

It should be an easy question, but she has to think. Is she happy? She’s content, mostly, or will be, now that Melody’s back; she’s doing useful work that she likes; she has good friends, and a nice home, and a life that has never lacked for joy and laughter and love. But she isn’t sure that she could call it _happy_. Certainly not by the definition she once would have used.

“I have a good life,” she says, finally.

“That isn’t the same thing.”

“No. But sometimes, it’s even better. And what we did, the four of us — it was worth it. I’ve never had to doubt that.”

“Well then, Amy Pond, I suppose that is a good life,” says the Doctor “Until next time.”

“Amelia,” she says.

“What?”

“It’s Amelia, now. Amelia Williams.”

“Good name.” He walks toward the TARDIS.

“Doctor- wait,” she calls, because there is one more thing she has to ask of him. “I need you to promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“Someday, when she’s older, even older than I’ve seen her, I want you to take Melody to Darillium. Take her to the Singing Towers.”

“I will.”

“And, maybe it isn’t my place to ask, but I want you to listen to them too. I think you could, if you were with her.”

“Amelia Williams, I think together, your daughter and I are going to be able to do anything.”

Again, he starts walking away, and again, he stops. “Which reminds me — that Mainframe of yours. Hypothetically, if you uploaded a stored consciousness onto the computer and then — again hypothetically - connected that consciousness to, say, a flesh avatar, would that body be able to become totally independent? Even if the mind was still technically in the Mainframe?”

“And this is purely hypothetical.”

“Oh, absolutely. Well, probably. Ninety-nine percent. Maybe ninety-five. I mean, there would be a lot of other things I’d need to do first, and I would have to be very, very clever…”

Even as he stands there in front of her, Amelia can tell the Doctor has moved on to the next adventure, begun another fairytale in which she will have no part. And she finds that the thought doesn’t hurt, because this is the way it should be. She smiles.

“Well then, Doctor, hypothetically, I would have to say yes.”

“Thank you Amelia Pond!” he shouts behind him as he runs, closing the TARDIS door before her old name has even finished echoing in the air. It fades, and she goes back to her home, back to the daughter who will probably be getting up soon. Melody never does sleep for long.

Amelia never sees the Doctor again. But then, she didn’t expect to, and hadn’t waited.


End file.
